So, are there *any* random events that penalize you for being evil and reward you for being good? I haven't played a ton, but so far ALL random events hose you for being good. The best I've gotten is kind of a neutral consequence, but never have I had a clearly beneficial consequence for choosing the good route.
I don't think so. Evil usually has the best deal, with neutral second best and good a poor last.
That may why more people choose to play as evil, because it is so much easier.
It's that way in real life as well, so the game is at least keeping with the real world in that respect.
Fneh on the "real life" crap. That's entirely dependent on how you decide to assess your own life, and plenty of us are quite ready to sacrifice money and/or power to maintain a sense of honor or religious faith. And that even includes the occasional business and political leader.
But, yes, if you're talking about "winning" a game of GC2, things are rigged in favor of evil and aimed at pan-galactic genocide. The ethical events are the #2 reason I tend to research Xeno Ethics as early as I can (#1 being the free terraforming). The less often the UI reminds me of this design choice, the happier I am as a player.
I made every evil choice in the beginning, then paid 10K to align with good. Of course, this is after I already reaped the rewards of being evil when those bonuses are needed most. In fact, after about the 3rd game, I stopped reading the text and went straight for the evil choice. I didn't realize til now "Good and Evil" made those annoying choices go away. Realism, that is a whole new ball of wax. I think there should be some choices that give a bonus for choosing good. Why are the colonists afraid of the whale creatures? The good choice to live with them should give a morality bonus. Destroying them should give a production bonus. Obviously, to be more realistic the choice between good and evil should be a choice between bonuses. This GC2 design (good = penalty, evil = bonus) is ridiculous.
This is the best so far I read for a possible idea for GalCiv3.
And think in it in even greater terms - good/neutral/evil could have their entire own strategies & strengthes in winning the map. It's kind of "hinted" at it as the game is now, but when it comes to the actual out-play the evil/greedy/militaristic way always is best solution for any race.
I consider the difference between reality and the way the game works just creative license. There's a lot of stuff that just wouldn't work if the game tried to adhere to some kind of realistic parallel. That said, the game favors evil in most respects. I always take the evil choice in ethical decisions. When it comes time to choose an alignment, the fee for Neutral is pretty minor really. The fee to select "good" can be substantial, but I haven't played good alignment since Dread Lords.
I think it would be better if the alignments were more balanced, as noted above, a choice between bonuses. Neutral isn't terribly far from evil in that respect, but Good always gets the short straw. I have not yet found a compelling reason to play it again.
Craig, you are right and in some way that's the liberty of Sci-Fi to be not realistic. How could it possibly be?
However, the final choice of Ethics is a bit "flawed" - I mean, choosing all the evil colonization-advantages, but then *paying* for a saintly alignment? Sounds like pure evil to me.... esp. in greater maps later 10k bc is just nothing, and you can "lease" it when researching Xeno-Ethics after emptying your purse. Why not having the game select an alignment fully automatically - based on the previous gameplay and decisions one did make?
That's a good point, I mean paying to turn good really isn't something that makes a lot of sense. It should be based on your behavior in the game as you stated. Maybe we'll see a revamp of the ethical alignment system in GC3 that makes more sense.
Not without a decent backstory, anyhow. All this really needs for a 'fix' is some explanation of the highly abstract BC you spend to choose an alignment that doesn't fit your past actions. "The discovery of Xeno Ethics sent shockwaves throughout the Altarian Resistance. We now know that our primitive understanding of Good was misguided and we are prepared to spend the resources necessary for our philosophers, educators, and people to embrace the middle way of Neutrality."
But the evil-is-stragically-superior problem is not merely cosmetic. I think I'd rather see no alignment system in GC3 than a close relative of what we have in GC2.
I don't pay a lot of attention to things that involve role playing or backstory. I'm more into the strategic aspect of games. In fact, I'm thinking about buying Mass Effect 2 which would be the first time I've had an interest in a game that advertises role playing as one of its features. Just not something I've been big on in the past. The point being, if GC3 is going to do anything that makes sense because of backstory, it would be wasted on me. Better if things just make sense strategically.
If you have any interest in sword & sorcery motifs, you could help the Elemental beta effort. GalCiv3 will almost certainly be very heavily influenced by eventual shape of Elemental, and one of the most interesting/messy things about that current Stardock game project is that it aims to advance the TBS genre with some RPG ideas.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
